Rep. Jasmine Crockett: The New GOP Asset
Who says history doesn’t repeat?
Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett is, inadvertently to be sure, recalling the ghost of a long-ago Democrat congressman who, as is becoming true of today’s Rep. Crockett, became an unwitting but mighty asset to Republicans of the day.
The ghost belongs to long-ago (circa 1940s and early 1950s) New York Democrat Congressman Vito Marcantonio.
Who was Vito Marcantonio?
Marcantonio was a far-Left Democrat Congressman from New York who represented Harlem, a neighborhood that was an ethnic mix of (per Wikipedia), “Italians, Jews, African-Americans, and Puerto Ricans.”
But there was something else that made Marcantonio stand out as a congressman: He was a decided Leftist.
A 1993 Nixon biography by the former British member of Parliament and minister of state for defense, Jonathan Aitken — Nixon: A Life — describes Marcantonio thusly:
He was “notorious,” a House Member “who stood defiantly on the extreme left of the political spectrum, [and] was widely regarded as being a Communist in everything but name. He could be relied on to vote the CP [Communist Party] line on every possible occasion.”
Nixon was, at the time, a young California congressman running for an open U.S. Senate seat in California against another House member, the one-time actress and decidedly liberal Democrat Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas.
And here is where the similarity between Marcantonio and, potentially, Jasmine Crockett, kicks in.
As with today’s Jasmine Crockett, Marcantonio was so far Left that he had become the decidedly notorious symbol of that far Left. In the day, he also became a symbol of Communism in America in the mid-20th century.
Nixon adeptly picked up on the infamous Marcantonio (from across the country in New York) to tie him together with Californian Douglas, using Marcantonio’s decidedly public reputation as so far Left that he was essentially a Communist, to cast a shadowy reputation on Douglas.
Among other things, out of the Nixon campaign came a flyer headlined “Douglas-Marcantonio Voting Record.” The book recounts that the flyer began by saying:
“Many persons have requested a comparison of the voting records of Congresswoman Helen Douglas and the notorious Communist party-liner Congressman Vito Marcantonio of New York,” and the leaflet claimed that on 354 occasions the two of them had voted in the same lobby.
After setting out the voting statistics together with detailed dates and references, the leaflet referred to the “Douglas-Marcantonio axis” and continued, “After studying the voting comparison between Mrs. Douglas and Marcantonio, is it any wonder that the Communist line newspaper the Daily People’s World in its lead editorial on 31 January 1950 labelled Congressman Nixon ‘The Man to Beat’ in this Senate race and that the Communist newspaper the New York Daily Worker in the issue of July 1947 selected Mrs. Douglas along with Marcantonio as ‘One of the Heroes of the 80th Congress’?”
The biography of Nixon goes on to say all of this not only “delighted Nixon supporters” but also “made a big impact on voters throughout the state.”
Two young California voters at the time, both Democrats who were among those persuaded by Nixon’s tying Marcantonio to Douglas, were “the young Ronald Reagan and his girlfriend, Nancy Davis.” The Marcantonio tie so persuaded Reagan and Davis that they held fundraising parties for Nixon.
So, what does all of this have to do with the rise on the Left of Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett?
A lot.
Like Vito Marcantonio in the long ago, Crockett and her far, far Left record, her wild accusations, and her presentations replete with four letter words, are making her a vivid symbol of today’s American far Left.
And in the doing, as with Marcantonio, she is holding herself out as a symbol of the Democrat Party that Republicans across the land — starting with President Trump and on down to every Republican on a ballot for whatever federal, state or local office — can hold up as exactly the reason not to vote for Democrats.
Just as the far Left Democrat Congressman Vito Marcantonio became an asset for Republican Congressman Richard Nixon in Nixon’s Senate race against Douglas, so too is Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett now, if inadvertantly, making herself into a symbol, an asset, for any and every Republican candidate to hold up as a reason to vote Republican.
Ya can’t make it up.
And the GOP might send the Texas Congresswoman a thank-you note for her hard work.
READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord:
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